Confessions of a book hoarder

The first thing people usually say to me, upon entering my home for the first time, is that I own a lot of books. They are wrong, of course. I am rather ashamed at the size of my collection, considering I studied English literature in university and now pretty much write about books for a living. Between my girlfriend and I me, there are probably between 1,000 and 1,250 books in our apartment, a number I consider rather paltry. Ideally, I’d like to double that number once we buy our first home — we currently rent — and I’m no longer faced with the prospect of hauling countless boxes of books between addresses.

No, the problem, in my opinion, is not the number of books I own, but that I am unable to get rid of any of them. I own some terrible, terrible books — you wouldn’t believe how many crap books get published in this country — but cannot, for the life of me, part with a single one. I am a book hoarder, which, in my line of work, is a troublesome problem to have. I had already acquired a (fairly) impressive collection of books before embarking on a career in arts journalism, a career that goes hand-in-hand with free books.

When you have upwards of 250 books come across your desk each week, things can quickly spiral out of control. Just now, I walked over to the part of the office where mail to me is delivered and counted 15 large containers filled with packages; these have come in the past three or four days. My first impression, upon seeing so many new books in one place, is to dive into them headfirst, like Scrooge McDuck into his vault of gold bullions.

Help me, please.

When A&E’s Hoarders premiered a couple of years ago, I watched with morbid fascination; that’s me, I thought, in 25 years (OK, five years). Still I continued to accumulate books, without ridding myself of an equal number. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten rid of a single book. All my university textbooks are still somewhere in my parents’ basement (if you’re reading this, Mom and Dad, do not get rid of that first-year Introduction to Politics textbook; I might want to read it someday for the first time).

I think the severity of my problem finally dawned on me a few weeks ago. After much pleading from my girlfriend, I finally spent an afternoon pruning my book collection. The shelves themselves have long since began to buckle; the weight of the books reshaped them from a sturdy, even plank into a smile, as if they are laughing.

I’d last attempted to cull my collection about a year ago, when I carried about 50 books from my shelves to a spare room in the basement; I intended to get rid of them, but they, of course, went nowhere. This time, I hoped to rid myself of a quarter of my books. Nothing so ridiculous happened, of course, but the fact that I found about a half dozen copies of Joseph Boyden’s Through Black Spruce — which I still have not read — and four copies of Lucy Knisley’s graphic novel French Milk — ditto — was proof enough that my addiction had crossed the line into a dark, uncharted area, where intervention may be necessary. I thought it was also fitting that I found both of my e-readers gathering dust under piles of books.

But I am getting better. At first, I would keep almost all the books sent to me, convinced I would, at some point down the road, read this debut short story collection or that literary journal. I would lug them back from the office, four or five at a time, and wedge them into my bookcase.

Now, I take very few books home; instead, a kindly editor whisks them off to a locked room, where they are safe from my second-guessing; they are sold, at different times during the year, at a book sale in our cafeteria, the proceeds of which go to literacy. On those days, I go down and gaze mournfully at my former books, and must stop myself from buying them back, or stealing them, like some sort of sad, book-obsessed madman.

• Are you a book hoarder? Proud of it? Send your stories to mmedley@nationalpost.com

Never-ending stories:

I am far from the only book hoarder in the world. In fact, when I took to Twitter to find fellow book hoarders, I was inundated with tales from fellow hoarders in minutes. I asked a few of them to share their own experiences:

At first I dabbled. I used the library. The church rummage sale. And then, peer pressure. When I went was an undergrad, I fell in with some questionable types: English professors. “You have to have this book,” they said. Who was I to argue? I had a small apartment with my girlfriend, with bricks and boards for shelves. Then I started working in a bookstore, a street-level pusher, with access to all the best stuff. My girlfriend and I moved into a bigger apartment. We upgraded to rough pine shelves, which we put together ourselves. People started asking, “Have you read all those? Are you ever going to read all those?” I would just smile. My girlfriend and I got married, and we moved into a house, with a whole room just for books. Not that they stayed in there. Then I started reviewing, for newspapers and magazines. Books started coming to me, seemingly out of the ether. I had to rent an off-site mailbox. A couple of years ago, I rented a basement suite for my study. A two-bedroom place, just for my books and my desk. Now there are piles of books on the floor and every horizontal surface. There are boxes of books in the storage room, books double and triple shelved. I can stop anytime I want, though. It’s not like it’s a problem. Really. I can stop. I just don’t want to. — Robert Wiersema is the author of Bedtime Story and Before I Wake

I assume I inherit my compulsion to not leave a bookstore empty-handed, as well as my knack for bibliophilic interior décor, from my father: I fondly recall the orange wall of Penguin spines in my childhood home as the best kind of wallpapering. As a kid, I confused several people informing them that in the suburb of Markham my father was taking me Sailing every Saturday morning. I continue to practice this kind of Sailing when I get the chance, which involves cruising from one Garage Sale to another to net paperbacks for one’s stockpile at home. — Robyn Read, editor, Freehand Books

The word hoard means “treasure” and evolves from “a thing hidden.” I have six bookcases in my office. That should be enough, but I have eight auxiliary stashes. These are in my night table, and in my husband’s night table, hidden in my children’s rooms, in my husband’s office, under the coffee table, in the kitchen, and behind a door in the living room. I buy books every week. My biggest anxiety when leaving on a trip is whether I will have enough books. Also, I don’t entirely trust people who don’t keep the books they read. — Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is the author of, most recently, the novel Perfecting